Recently in Environment

How would you count the number of spider species in, say, a chunk of the Panamanian rain forest? With an outsize magnifying glass, a pair of tweezers and The Observer Book Of Spiders? Forget it: an artificially intelligent cobweb recognition system is the answer, say Carlos Travieso at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in Spain and his colleagues.

I'd hate to be the IT guy fixing this network. By dropping electronic devices into the stomachs of cows and networking them together, researchers hope to reduce the climate-warming farts and burps they produce.

Emissions from livestock - much of which is methane released when they burp - are a serious component of global greenhouse gas emissions. But some individuals are a little more, erm, 'gassy' than others. By breeding "low methane" animals, and modifying farming practices slightly, their emissions could be lowered by up to 50 per cent, says Chris McSweeny from the CSIRO's Sustainable Agriculture Flagship in Brisbane, Australia.